Mass and class, a survey of social divisions PDF book 1904 by William Ghent
In the previous work I sought, by a satirical interpretation of the facts and tendencies of the time, to depict the not impossible return of a regime of lord, agent, and underling. I have no excuses or apologies to offer for that work. As a warning alike to the apathetic and to the oversanguine, it served, I hope, a useful purpose. But the data which it employed were not, as my critics hastened to point out, the only data pertinent to the matter, nor was the regime predicted the sole and inevitable outcome.
It is of the "possible alternative outcome," mentioned in the preface to the third edition of that work, that I have now to speak, — " the assertion of the democratic spirit and will, the conquest of the baronial regime, and the transformation of the industrial system " into one more in accord with the needs of the people. In my present work I have sought to analyze the social mass into its component classes; to describe these classes, not as they may be imagined in some projected benevolent feudalism, but as they are to be found here and now in the industrial life of the nation; and to indicate the current of social progress which, in spite of the blindness of the workers, the capacity of the masters, and the subservience of the retainers, makes ever for an ultimate of social justice.
Contents of the book:
I. The Lesson from History
II. Classes and the Class Struggle
III. Classes and Class Functions.
IV. Class Ethics...
V. Ethics of the Producers.
VI. Ethics of the Traders.
VII. The Reign of Graft.
VIII. The Reign of Graft {Continued')
IX. The Failure of the Trading Class
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